Category Archives: Grand Midland Hotel

The Midland Grand Hotel was built by Victorian architect Sir George Gilbert Scott, it is one of the best examples of high gothic architecture in the country and yet struggled to make a profit eventually falling into disrepair in the 1930’s.

Now called the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel the grand hotel is restored in all it’s glory and was reopened on 5th May this year (2011) some 138 years to the day after the original Midland Grand Hotel opened in 1873. The east wing opened first which was followed by the rest in Spring 1876.

The hotel was by any standards luxuriously expensive with costly fixtures like the grand staircase, rooms with gold leaf walls and a fireplace in every room, but the building also had a raft of innovative features like hydraulic lifts, concrete floors, revolving doors though none of the guest rooms had bathrooms – that was yet to come.

The interior looks beautiful and appears to have kept many of it’s original features (take a look at the images)

Eventually the hotel was taken over by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway in 1922, before closing in 1935. The building was renamed St Pancras Chambers and used as offices for British Rail.

In the 1980s it failed fire safety regulations and was shut down. The exterior was restored and made structurally sound at a cost of around £10 million in the 1990s and in 2004 planning permission was granted for the building to be redeveloped for it’s original use and long may it remain.